Improving screening care for pregnant women is as easy as ABC

In this blog article, antenatal and newborn screening coordinator Louise Frost explains how the creation of an antenatal booking centre (ABC) improved early access and continuity of care for women at Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) in south east London.

Louise also submitted this work as a case for shared learning. Providers, commissioners and other stakeholders are all invited to share examples of learning and good practice relating to NHS population screening programmes.

All pregnant women are offered screening for sickle cell and thalassaemia

involvement of the maternity services liaison committee which designed a self-referral booking form

both GP and self-referral forms being made available online

maintenance of a robust referral database to review services

directing women to the ABC to self-refer following a confirmed pregnancy within the radiology department (reducing delays)

ABC staff phoning women to arrange their appointments and reduce the chance of DNAs

awareness raising among primary care through a GP event and a GP newsletter article

ABC appointment pathway

We aim to offer women a midwife appointment at 9+0 weeks of pregnancy. If this is not possible then an appointment is offered at 12+0 weeks and we invite them to attend a walk-in booking blood clinic before 10+0 weeks.

Post-implementation

Since implementing we have further developed the service by including:

additional overflow midwife clinics, including at weekends to improve availability

text message appointment alerts to reduce the number of women not attending

referral data audit and community team service redesign to reflect findings and ensure continuity of care

changing the online self-referral form to an automatic submission from the website into the ABC generic email account – the referrals are processed from here

daily review of appointment waiting times

KPI data for ST2 (timeliness of test) for Princess Royal University Hospital

The above chart shows the improvement in performance since the introduction of the ABC approach.

There were no cost implications in setting up this service, which has improved early access and continuity of care for all women.

This service redesign and achievement in improving KPI performance has been recognised by being shortlisted for the Royal College of Midwives Policy into Practice Award.